Family History Library Catalog 2.0</h1> <article> <h1>Family History Library Catalog 2.0</h1> <p>paulballen — Wed, 14 May 2008 20:45:22 -0700</p> <p>This morning at a very small press conference in Kansas City at the National Genealogical Society annual conference we made a very large announcement. </p> <p>In fact, we announced something that I have personally hoped for and dreamed of for more than a decade. </p> <p>Today we announced a partnership between FamilySearch and <a href="http://www.familylink.com">FamilyLink.com</a> to publish the Family History Library Catalog -- the largest single database of genealogy sources in the world -- in Web 2.0 fashion.</p> <p>This means that individual genealogists, librarians, archivists, and others from around the world will be able, when the Catalog 2.0 comes online in the coming months, to enhance and extend the value of the catalog. Users will be able to add new sources that are currently in the library catalog, and thus extend its scope of coverage. They will be able to improve the source descriptions, and even rate and review sources as to their usefulness. </p> <p>Whenever a source listed in the catalog has been digitized, and exists somewhere online, there will be links created to the digital version by users or through automation technology that FamilyLink.com will utilize. </p> <p>The catalog lists millions of sources from more than a hundred countries, including more than 2 million rolls of microfilm. <a href="http://genealogy.about.com/library/weekly/aa080700a.htm">About.com genealogy guide Kimberly Powell</a> calls it the "gem of the Family History Library," and "the best resource on the FamilySearch web site." </p> <p>The Genealogical Society of Utah has been microfilming valuable records from all over the world since 1939. The catalog lists all of these films, and organizes them by locality and record type. Some of the records that have been filmed have since been destroyed by war or accident, and so the films become the only surviving copy of the valuable records. And the films themselves are preserved in the famous Granite Mountain Vault.</p> <p>The catalog also lists books, periodicals, maps, and all kinds of other holdings in the world's largest family history library (in Salt Lake City) that would otherwise be unknown and unused. </p> <p>As I said earlier, I have wanted to work with the catalog for more than a decade. I think it is one of the most valuable tools in the world for family history, and I think it can become more accessible and more useful to millions of people worldwide, who don't yet know that it exists or how to best use it. <p>When we founded Ancestry.com in 1996-97, our vision was to digitize the genealogical records in all nations and make them available online. We saw the catalog playing a key role in that vision. </p> <p>I had started a Masters Degree program at BYU in Library Science back in 1990 (although I had to drop out early to focus on my electronic pubishing business.) I have a great respect for libraries and library science. After all, the accessibility to most of the world's information, prior to the internet, came because of the organizational skills and care of libraries and archives around the world.</p> <p>I had also watched as the founders of Yahoo began to turn an online classification system for web sites into a multi-billion dollar company. Until Google came along, Yahoo was the most valuable of all web sites. Why? Because it catalogued all the rest. It could be the starting point for all queries, even before search had been perfected, when browsing was one of the dominant activities on the web.</p> <p>We made several attempts over the years to see if we might be able to license and publish the catalog. But the timing must not have been right. Until Web 2.0 and social networking came on the scene, I'm not sure what value we would have been able to add to it, so our attempts were not successful. <p>But today, I'm overjoyed that my new company, <a href="http://www.familylink.com">FamilyLink.com</a>, will have the privilege of working with this precious asset in partnership with FamilySearch, to develop the next generation version of the catalog, that will become more comprehensive, more open, more accurate, and provide more intelligent, algorithmic guidance to sources for family historians worldwide.</p> <p>Since only a tiny fraction of the known genealogical content in the world is in digital format today, the catalog serves an incredibly valuable purpose, directing researchers to offline sources including microfims that contain the answers they are looking for. (And those microfilms can be accessed from over 4,500 family history centers around the world, for a very small fee.) </p> <p>As more and more sources become transcribed or digitized, the catalog will directly link to the online version, whether they exist on Ancestry.com, WorldVitalRecords.com, FamilySearch.org, Footnote.com, NEHGS.org, or on Google Books, Microsoft Live Books, USGenWeb, WorldGenWeb, or other web sites, saving researchers countless time.</p> <p>The new catalog, which will be available via both <a href="http://www.familylink.com">FamilyLink.com</a> and <a href="http://www.familysearch.org">FamilySearch.org</a> in the future, may become the single best starting point for family history searches, the way Yahoo used to be the best place to find any web site, and may help any researcher quickly see which sources will help the most, and which other researchers have used those sources previously.</p> <p>This project will bring the "wisdom of the crowds" to genealogy in a way that has never been possible before, showing which of the sources for any locality in the world ought to be consulted, and in what order.</p> <p>I want to thank everyone who made this announcement possible, including those who have worked on the catalog for many years to make it the wonderful resource that it already is, and those who have been designing the next version of it, as well as the decision makers at FamilySearch who believe with us in what is possible for this catalog. </p> <p>In addition to what has been described above, how would you like to see the catalog enhanced? What would make it most useful to you personally, or to your institution?</p> <p>As always, I welcome your comments and feedback. </p> <p><a href="http://www.familysearch.org/eng/home/News/frameset_news.asp?PAGE=Press/2008-5-14_Library_Catalog_Upgrade.asp">Official Press Release</a></p> </article> <article> <h1>Becoming a Top 1,000 Web Property</h1> <p>paulballen — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 12:15:35 -0700</p> <p>Yesterday we set two traffic records. <a href="http://www.worldvitalrecords.com">WorldVitalRecords.com</a> had more than 36,000 unique visitors--6,000 higher than our two previous best days, earlier in April. And <a href="http://www.wererelated.com">We're Related on Facebook</a> had more than 105,000 daily active users.</p> <p>One of the best parts about being an internet entrepreneur is how immediately your actions translate into measureable results. Our team members are working hard on search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising, email marketing campaigns, and improving our affiliate marketing program. As each channel improves, the overall cumulative results are exciting. </p> <p>When you have team members that have experienced the thrill of extreme growth in the past from how a web site was built or marketed and when they are hungry to experience it again, and know how to do it, then you have a great success formula. When you don't have a team that has done it before, you have to inspire them by getting them to listen to or read about people who have done it before. </p> <p>My personal observation is that the vast majority of people that work in most companies have never experienced anything like the rapid real-time success of a massive internet marketing campaign that they personally helped launch, or a melt-down of servers caused by publicity or viral marketing from something they personally helped build. I remember watching a few product and marketing managers in the early days of MyFamily.com go through a personal transformation when they personally designed or launched a feature, or a marketing campaign, that brought in huge numbers. They were never the same again. From that point on, they wanted to do it again and again, and avoid as many meetings and as much bureaucracy and red tape as possible. They wanted to be on a small dedicate team focused on rapid development. They wanted to experience that thrill again. </p> <p>Most people I have worked with over the years are willing to spend a lot of time in meetings, or in planning, or in writing 20-page MRDs (marketing requirements documents), rather than spending most of their time building a site or actually launching a marketing program. We have a high concentration of experienced and hungry team members at <a href="http://www.familylink.com">FamilyLink.com</a>, so we are optimistic about the future.</p> <p>A good description about the difference between a traditional business with its long-term planning cycles and a fast-paced internet company comes from Meg Whitman, who joined eBay after a successful career with Hasbro, Disney and Proctor & Gamble. In the book Net Entrepreneurs Only, on page 179, she describes the radical difference. <a href="/2004/02/17/579">I blogged about this in 2004</a>. </p> <p>Everyday we use Omniture Site Catalyst to run our online marketing programs. But we are also looking at our public Quantcast numbers every day. Recently we were able to figure out how to place a Quantcast pixel on our Facebook application so that we can get credit publicly for the Facebook users that are using our We're Related application every day.</p> <p>Our <a href="http://www.quantcast.com/p-86YkM5oSeBMSE">Quantcast chart for the FamilyLink.com network of sites</a> now looks like we must be on the verge of a server "melt-down" -- and we've had people ask us about this. But in fact, we've had a ton of Facebook traffic for months now, and it is only just now showing up on our public chart. And the good news is that thanks to Amazon EC2, we are scalable as far as the eye can see.</p> <p>After another two weeks of Quantcast tracking our actual usage across all of our properties, it appears that our network will break into the ranks of the top 1,000 web properties in the U.S.</p> <p>It takes about <a href="http://www.quantcast.com/top-sites-10">2.1 million unique visitors per month to be a top 1,000 web site</a> or property. We'll soon be in the company of prweb.com, looksmart.com, and stanford.edu in terms of unique monthly visitors. To break into the <a href="http://www.quantcast.com/top-sites-5">top 500 web properties</a>, we'll have to reach 3.3 million monthly uniques. </p> <p>I remember going to Fall Internet World in New York City back in 1998 and first running into Media Metrix. At their booth they had a list of the top 500 web sites at that time, and I was thrilled to see <a href="http://www.ancestry.com">Ancestry.com</a> on that list. I remember later, after the successful launch of <a href="http://www.myfamily.com">MyFamily.com</a> with its meteoric viral growth, and after our acquisition of <a href="http://www.rootsweb.com">Rootsweb.com</a>, that our network of properties broke into the top 50 in reach, and our reported monthly page views put as at #19 for all US internet properties. Imagine that--a top 20 internet company based on page views!</p> <p>It is clear from those early days that genealogy sites and tools for connecting families have huge potential. With the right business model, partners, and the right team, a company in this space has tremendous potential. It's no wonder, to me, that <a href="http://www.geni.com">Geni.com</a> reportedly got a $100 million valuation on their Series A round last year. They are still, of course, trying to grow into that valuation, but they are showing steady growth. The family tree and family social networking space is hot. It has huge potential. The big question now is which of the many various companies in this space will execute well enough to survive and to attract enough customers to become viable. Our team is quite confident that we can make it. We have a number of team members who have experienced the thrill of victory before and are hungry to experience it again.</p> <p>As I said in my previous post, <a href="/were-hiring">We're Hiring</a>. If you have been a part of a fast-growing internet company in the past and are interested in joining with us, please contact me and send me your resume. It's going to be a really fun ride. </p> </article> <article> <h1>We're Hiring</h1> <p>paulballen — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 07:46:09 -0700</p> <p>Great companies don't start out that way.</p> <p>Great web sites don't necessarily seem great at the beginning.</p> <p>Marissa Mayer laughs about how bad many of the early Google beta products were. (Check out her <a href="http://edcorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=1554">Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Lecture at Stanford</a>--it is so worthwhile.) In 05 or 06 they started making sure that the true alpha versions of their products were rolled out under the Google Labs logo, so that products that go to beta now are actually pretty decent. But she reminds us that when Google Video launched you couldn't actually watch any videos on it. Remember...it was snapshots of still screen shots and used closed-captioning transcripts for search. Can you even believe they launched Google Video that way? It's pretty astonishing. And yet, in the tried and true Google fashion, they threw it out there, quickly iterated, and now they dominate. Ok, they had to buy YouTube for $1.6 billion in order to dominate online video, but getting started in that space surely lead to them learning how difficult it would be and how an acquisition would be necessary.</p> <p>Guy Kawasaki talks about how perfectionism or the desire to do super high quality work, which we sometimes don't actually have time for, often prevents us from doing anything at all. He talks about <a href="http://www.lifehack.org/articles/productivity/getting-to-good-enough.html">"getting to good enough."</a> Entrepreneurs have to take action: launch a site, pitch a customer, do something. Don't just plan, and don't just prepare forever.</p> <p>Clearly, I have established in my career that I don't have a problem with getting to good enough. In fact, my threshold for good enough may be way lower than it should be. :)</p> <p>Case in point: check out the <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/19961028055925/http://www.ancestry.com/">original Ancestry.com web site design</a>. I personally designed this logo with some kind of paint program back in 1996. It cured me forever of any aspirations in graphic design.</p> <p>Horribly ugly, yes. But good enough to get us into the online genealogy game. None of us (there were about 4-5 of us working on the web site, search engine, and databases back then) obsessed over any details. We just took action and moved ahead. And as soon as we could, we improved the site design, changed the logo, improved the search results pages, and made hundreds of improvements over time.</p> <p>My level of embarrassment declined steadily.</p> <p>And that is exactly what is happening at <a href="http://www.worldvitalrecords.com/">WorldVitalRecords.com</a> and <a href="http://www.familylink.com">FamilyLink.com</a>.</p> <p>Our site design isn't what we want it to be. But it has been functional enough to get us in the genealogy game. On Kory Meyerink's list of the <a href="http://www.progenealogists.com/top50genealogy2008.htm">top 50 genealogy web sites</a> (based on traffic analysis from multiple sources) we are now #10. And the sites ahead of us have either been around for 10+ years or have raised several times as much capital from investors as we have. (Our Series A round in August was $1.2 million plus a bridge loan to our B round.) </p> <p>Now that we have traction from customers (we're approaching 30,000 paying subscribers and nearly 3 million installs of our Facebook app) and from investors, our team is growing, and we are getting serious about upgrading all the features and aspects of our web site and our business where we initially had to just get to "good enough."</p> <p>In some cases our good enough was actually pretty poor. Maybe it was just barely good enough, at least in our judgment, to move forward. But we did move forward, and we like where we are now.</p> <p>In order to really improve our business, we are working on the following:</p> <ul> <li>improve our web site design</li> <li>streamline our buying process </li> <li>upgrade our image viewer</li> <li>get the next billion records from our content partners onto our web site; and continue forming more partnerships </li> <li>automate our royalty reports and accounting processes</li> <li>reaching out to genealogy partners in dozens of countries</li> <li>truly enable genealogists to help one another on familylink.com</li> <li>improve our search algorithms and search templates</li> <li>build our recommendation engine to help every genealogist to know what to do next </li> <li>double our sales and support staff</li> <li>port our We're Related application to other social networks</li> <li>and dramatically increase our external marketing campaigns</li> </ul> <p>Fortunately we already have a world class data engineer and search engine engineer working on our back end systems, and we use the world's best web analytics from Omniture to measure and analyze everything happening on our web site. Yesterday I spent my first couple of hours using Omniture Suite, which takes online marketing to a whole new level, connecting our marketing campaigns to the Site Catalyst reporting back end. It is the best upgrade I have ever seen from Omniture. </p> <p>When you have just a few employees, it is hard to make steady improvements in multiple areas of the company at the same time. You kind of do things serially. But with nearly 20 employees and 10 overseas contractors, we now have the bandwidth to divide and conquer. This way we can identify multiple weak areas at once and attack them in parallel with separate teams. It feels really good when a startup gets to this point. </p> <p>There are a number of positions that we need to fill so that we can continue making progress in key areas. Unfortunately, one of the areas of weakness for us right now is that we haven't built or automated a way to post job openings yet on our web site (no, it's not even content-managed, so that our HR department--wait, we don't have an HR department--can bypass development and just get the job postings online and syndicated to other job sites.)</p> <p>So...there is way too much inefficiency and too much manual effort involved in recruiting. I love efficiency, and love to find ways to automate everything possible, especially for things that are going to be ongoing frequent tasks. And I expect that recruiting will be one of the tasks we will be repeating a lot as we grow into a major company in the genealogy and family social networking industry. (Now that is a mouthful--we'll have to find a more concise way to describe what we do.)</p> <p><strong>Job Openings -- Coming Soon -- at FamilyLink.com</strong></p> <ul> <li>User Interface Designer (over all of our properties)</li> <li>Full Time Accountant (already filled--starts April 7th)</li> <li>VP Marketing</li> <li>Other marketing positions: affiliate marketing, email marketing, media buyer </li> <li>Inbound and Outbound Sales (we've raised our wages to $12 per hour base plus commissions; <strong>we are ready to hire several people immediately</strong>)</li> <li>Genealogy content experts and licensing managers</li> <li>IT manager</li> </ul> <p>Look for these job openings to be fully described and listed on our web sites soon, as well as in other places. Most of the non-sales positions, I expect, will be filled by people in our personal networks or social networks that come highly recommended from trusted sources.</p> <p>Whenever possible, we want to hire employees with experience in family history, but absolutely required is a serious passion for building something great, and for being a part of what we hope will become a global company connecting families through technology.</p> <p>Please let me know if you'd like to join our team.</p> <p>And remember, you get to spend <a href="/10-time">10% of your paid time</a> working on your own family history. </p> </article> <article> <h1>Live Blogging: Josh Porter on Effective Social Interface Design</h1> <p>paul@familylink.com — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 12:49:28 -0700</p> <p>Josh Porter, Bokardo.com has blogged about social design for 7-8<br /> years. Is lead designer for Chi.mp, a next generation social network.<br /> In August he started his own design company to design interfaces that<br /> focus on enabling people to talk to each other. Main issues: how do<br /> you get people to engage with your site. How do you get them to sign<br /> up? He's had clients who got Techcrunched, had a spike, and then over<br /> time they all leak out. How to provide value over the long term?</p> <p>Five principles:<br /> 1. The Del.icio.us Lesson. Delicious let you have bookmarks and access<br /> them everywhere. You could tag bookmarks, adding your own comments.<br /> Tagging was new back then. Designers talked about subverting<br /> hierarchical structures and folksonomies. But people were just saving<br /> bookmarks for later. I tell all my clients: "Personal value precedes<br /> network value" or social value. These are great tools even if your<br /> friends don't use them. I ask: is your service/software valueable even<br /> if no one else uses it. The Delicious popular page has huge social<br /> value, but it started with the personal value of people saving<br /> bookmarks for later.</p> <p>2. Tie Behavior to Identify. Profiles support identity; but not all<br /> social software is about a profile. Amazon.com customer reviews: some<br /> have real names, some are by "A Customer". Subtle distinction. EBay<br /> feedback profile may be the best one to look at, sometimes we overlook<br /> what Amazon and eBay do, but they aggregate feedback about each<br /> seller--even though you don't know who they are, you know how trusted<br /> they are. On eBay you only need to know behavior, not who they are.</p> <p>3. Give Recognition. Example: top Diggers. It showed who was most<br /> successful for getting their stories to the home page. People started<br /> seeing this as a competition. They all friended each other and helped<br /> each other get top diggs. The top diggers ended up kind of controlling<br /> the home page. So I talked with Daniel Barka, lead interface designer<br /> at Digg, and I asked him if they had a problem with users gaming the<br /> system; he said no, that's what the interface let's you do. Early on,<br /> this was great for the growth of Digg. But once they hit the<br /> mainstream and had enough users to support it, they removed the Top<br /> Diggers feature. I've never worked on a project where anything was<br /> removed.</p> <p>Recognition seems to work better when it comes from the group and<br /> isn't permanent. One problem with Top Diggers was that once you got to<br /> the top it was easy to stay there, since top diggs were cumulative.<br /> Made it hard for new users to break in.</p> <p>Threadless also does this well. They have competitions like Digg, but<br /> any recognition ends. Don't make everything cumulative.</p> <p>4. Show Causation. You want to provide options for action and feedback<br /> when they take an action. In the "old days" the screen would go white<br /> as you had a page refresh. Now with ajax you see spinny things showing<br /> something has happened. When someone is rating a movie on Netflix, you<br /> need to show them something is happening. They are excellent at this.<br /> The more you rate movies, the better their suggestions are. On one<br /> screen he shows how it mentions like 5 times where they show causation<br /> of what they are doing. I tell clients this, and they say, "don't they<br /> already know this?" People know to stop at intersections, but we still<br /> give them signs.</p> <p>"Rate your recent return" is like a game: waiting for your rating. Makes it fun.</p> <p>5. Leveraging Reciprocity. I have worked on ratings and review sites.<br /> Clients ask me, why do people leave reviews? Are they altruists? I say<br /> no. I don't think we ask people know why they do this. I interviewed<br /> people. They didn't immediately know. So I asked, why do you leave<br /> reviews on Yelp. They say, "I don't want anyone to eat at a place that<br /> doesn't have good food, make the same mistake that I did." So that's<br /> altruism. They always also add, I like to see how many people read my<br /> reviews; I like compliments and tips. So there are many reasons why<br /> people do reviews. They say, I get a ton of value from what others do.</p> <p>On LinkedIn, where one of my good friends works, there are remarkable<br /> stats on reciprocation when someone writes a positive review for you,<br /> it is often reciprocated.</p> <p>These are the five principles, there are many more. I just finished a<br /> book on this, coming out in a month or two.</p> <p>Q. Amazon top reviewers are also cumulative.<br /> A. Hariet Clouser (sic) is top reviewer on Amazon, with over 14,000<br /> book reviews. I did the math. She reads and reviews 7 books a day. She<br /> is one of the most hated people. I blogged about this: is she real?<br /> Many bloggers came and said, she can't be. Amazon now does both<br /> quantity and quality of reviewers. The rankings are being weighted by<br /> helpful/not helpful more than by just quantity. If you read Harriet's<br /> reviews, you'll notice they are a lot like the back of a book--so<br /> she's not for real. So quality of review is now getting rewarded more.</p> </article> <article> <h1>In San Francisco for SnapSummit 2.0</h1> <p>paulballen — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 08:19:41 -0700</p> <p>I'm looking forward to hearing keynotes from Dave Morin, Senior Platform Manager at Facebook and Jim Benedetto, VP Technology at MySpace, as well as from 20 or so panelists who are succeeding with their social networking applications and investments. My last major dose of social networking content from industry insiders came at CES in January where I attended (and then bought mp3 recordings) of virtually every session on widgets and social networking. When I went to order my mp3 recordings, they just copied all the ones I wanted onto a thumb drive and gave them to me. It was the first conference where I have purchased the audio that way--very cool.</p> <p>I am starting to see more and more how social networking will completely change the world of genealogy. Very few genealogists use social networks today, but that will change. One interesting fact that you can discover using Facebook Ads (<a href="http://www.facebook.com/ads" title="www.facebook.com/ads">www.facebook.com/ads</a>) is that there are more people over 50 in Canada using Facebook than there are people over 50 in the U.S. using Facebook. Since genealogists tend to be older, the power of social networks won't become evident to the 15+ million genealogists in the U.S. until more and more of them embrace social networks. But what they really need is a social network designed for genealogy.</p> <p><a href="http://www.familylink.com">FamilyLink.com</a> is a close to launching our first feature that could make this social network essential for all serious genealogists. It's a feature that has never been tried before on a massive scale. We are excited to roll it out.</p> <p>What is interesting to me is that ever since last week when I blogged about 10% time, and as I have been contacting relatives and gathering information about my own ancestors, I now view everything that we are doing at FamilyLink and WorldVitalRecords through the lens of "how will this help me and my family with our genealogy?" </p> <p>Just this morning, as the sun is rising on "my city by the bay", I had two breakthrough ideas that I think could be implemented quite easily that would make my life so much easier. I want to find my ancestors and connect with my relatives who have already gathered so much information about them. A social networking concept that is becoming more popular but has not been applied to genealogy would really help me out. </p> </article> <article> <h1>10% time</h1> <p>paulballen — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 13:46:47 -0700</p> <p>Last week I listened for the third time to Marissa Mayer's amazing<br /> talk at Stanford about Google's culture of innovation. (I can't link<br /> to it right now. I'm blogging from my blackberry.) She lists the top 9<br /> reasons that Google is innovative.</p> <p>One of them, of course, is that every Google engineer gets to work on<br /> their own pet project for 20% of the time. Marissa says that in the<br /> second half of 2005, 50% of the products Google introduced came from<br /> 20% time.</p> <p>Another was that "ideas come from everywhere," including customers,<br /> employees, senior management, and through acquisitions.</p> <p>Clearly Google folks are encouraged not only to have ideas but to<br /> share them and to pursue them.</p> <p>That is a very different culture from most companies I've ever seen,<br /> where few people are energized with new ideas, and those that have<br /> great ideas are often frustrated by politics or lack of resources to<br /> the point where they have no hope that their ideas will be heard or<br /> implemented.</p> <p>Also last week two things happened that struck me personally. First, a<br /> genealogist ribbed me good naturedly after my keynote speech Friday at<br /> BYU.</p> <p>He said, "why can't we get you guys (meaning those of us who run<br /> genealogy internet companies) to do genealogy yourselves so that you<br /> know what we need you to build for us."</p> <p>I defended myself by saying, "but you heard me say that I've read<br /> 2,000 pages about genealogy sources in the past year--I'm really<br /> trying to do better this time around." (After I started Ancestry.com I<br /> focused for 6 years on strategy and internet marketing and did very<br /> little genealogy reading.)</p> <p>"But reading about genealogy, and doing genealogy are two very<br /> different things," he chided.</p> <p>Later that day I came across a blog post from last September<br /> complaining that I was travelling so much and blogging so little that<br /> I might get out of touch with the needs of genealogists. The blogger<br /> wished out loud that Dick Eastman could be the CEO of a genealogy<br /> internet company so that it would be sure to do all the right things.</p> <p>Both of these comments stung me. They have been haunting me all weekend.</p> <p>So I decided to do something about it. I really want our company to<br /> make genealogy easier for millions of people. And I really want to<br /> create a Google-like culture of innovation and ideas. (One of the<br /> reasons I left Ancestry in 2002 is that the culture of innovation had<br /> disappeared.)</p> <p>We have a huge amount of data online and much more coming, thanks to<br /> many content partners, but we need to make sure every feature of our<br /> web site is easy to find and easy to use. We need to make it easier to<br /> search by country, by database, by family. We need to address the user<br /> experience to start to finish.</p> <p>Like Google, who launches alpha (Google Labs) and beta versions of<br /> their products before they are really ready, we have shown a<br /> willingness to put new features up as quickly as we can.</p> <p>But Google immediately seeks feedback from their huge customer base,<br /> measures it, and then iterates as quickly as possible to make the user<br /> experience better.</p> <p>I know we can do a better job of seeking input from customers and<br /> iterating more quickly until we get the product right.</p> <p>And I know that if we take the time to use our own products<br /> continually, that we will have more insights about how to improve the<br /> user experience.</p> <p>So, today I am announcing 10% time for all employees at FamilyLink.com.</p> <p>I am asking every full time employee in the company to spend 10% of<br /> their paid time working on their own family history. This includes<br /> researching, collaborating, preserving, and sharing. It means using<br /> our web sites and other software and web sites as well.</p> <p>I will commit to do the same.</p> <p>In addition, I am asking each employee to document the frustrations<br /> and obstacles they encounter along the way. And whenever they have an<br /> idea about how to improve something to jot it down.</p> <p>I will regularly review the top ideas that are submitted by each employee.</p> <p>As Marissa Mayer kept a list of the top 100 personal projects under<br /> way at Google, I will keep a running list of the top 100 best ideas<br /> for improving the online experience in family history.</p> <p>To determine the best ideas, I may use my own subjective judgment or<br /> have a few advisors review them with me, or maybe even rely upon the<br /> "wisdom of the crowds" and use customer surveys to gather votes.</p> <p>Each month, I will award bonuses to the employees who submitted the best ideas.</p> <p>Once we have this structure in place, I'd like to open it up to our<br /> customers as well, and reward them for taking the time to tell us how<br /> we can improve our services.</p> <p>Our company is here to stay. We are feeling the financial and moral<br /> support of tens of thousands of genealogists who want us to succeed.<br /> We have sufficiently matured to move out of the frenetic start-up<br /> phase of our business, where maybe we sometimes cut corners or moved<br /> too quickly or recklessly, to a more thoughtful and careful stage<br /> where we can really understand customer needs and improve the user<br /> experience.</p> <p>And a major part of that stage will be doing genealogy ourselves every week.</p> <p>I know my whole family would be thrilled if we can learn more about<br /> Charles Allen, my distant ancestor on the Allen line. He shows up in<br /> New Hampshire in 1635 and we don't know where he came from. I now<br /> believe that we are most likely to get a clue about his origins by<br /> doing DNA testing and finding some related Allens in the UK.</p> <p>But whether or not we can find Charles, I have thousands of known<br /> ancestors to learn more about, and new ancestors and living relatives<br /> to discover.</p> <p>I'm excited to get started.</p> <p>And I know the ideas for improving the customer experience are really<br /> going to start flowing.</p> <p>--<br /> Sent from Gmail for mobile | mobile.google.com</p> <p>Paul Allen<br /> CEO, FamilyLink.com / World Vital Records</p> <p>office: 801-377-0588<br /> mobile: 801-376-2738<br /> Blog: <a href="http://www.paulallen.net" title="www.paulallen.net">www.paulallen.net</a></p> <p>FamilyLink: connecting families<br /> WorldVitalRecords.com: fastest growing genealogy community in the world</p> </article> <article> <h1>Venture Capital in the Rockies Wrapup</h1> <p>paulballen — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 21:44:25 -0800</p> <p>I'm at the Beaver Creek Resort in Avon, Colorado today for the Venture<br /> Capital in the Rockies event.</p> <p>20 startup and growth companies, including 14 from Colorado and 4 from<br /> Utah are here to present business plans to 200-300 venture capitalists<br /> from 8 states. Our company, FamilyLink.com, was selected as a<br /> presenter. We each get 15 minutes and then 5-10 minutes of Q&A.</p> <p>Here is a brief rundown of the presenters:</p> <p>- Albeo Technologies (Colorado) markets solid-state lighting systems<br /> based on white light-emitted diode (LED) technology. Lighting accounts<br /> for 40% of all electricity consumption in the commercial market. Have<br /> raised $1.55 million in two rounds of funding.</p> <p>- Altela (New Mexico) has raised $10 million to develop a new<br /> energy-reuse water desalination product that operates at remote<br /> locations such as oil and gas wells.</p> <p>- AVA Solar (Colorado) was spun out of Colorado State University. They<br /> have "perfected a robust, industrial-scale, continuous process for<br /> producing solar photo-voltaic modules at an industry-leading<br /> manufacturing cost below $1 per watt. The market for solar PV is<br /> large, growing rapidly, and currently hampered by a significant supply<br /> shortage. Growing at a 46% CAGR since the late 1990s, the market is<br /> projected to be 23 gigawatts, or $40-60 billion by 2012.</p> <p>- Control4 (Utah) has raised a total of $80 million in funding since<br /> inception to create a platform for the digital home. An estimated 38<br /> million households are potential customers for Control who have<br /> installed or plan to install home theaters, plasma TVs, LCD Flat Panel<br /> TVs, big screen TVs, intercom, lighting control, security system,<br /> structured wiring, digital or media PC, surround sound, and MP3<br /> playback through stereo.</p> <p>- DAZ Productions (Utah) provides easy to use 3D software and<br /> ultra-high quality 3D models and accessories. They operate the<br /> Artzone.com social marketplace. Have been funded by Highway12<br /> Ventures. $10 million in revenue in 2007; raised more than $4 million<br /> last year. They have a huge opportunity in social networks, online<br /> gaming, and virtual worlds.</p> <p>- FamilyLink.com (Utah) runs a genealogy subscription web site with<br /> more than 25,000 paying customers. Worldvitalrecords.com has nearly 1<br /> billion searchable names online with 2.5 billion more in the pipeline.<br /> Genealogists pay $49 to $149 per year for access to these databases.<br /> FamilyLink.com also builds social networking applications for familes,<br /> with more than 2.8 million users of its We're Related app on Facebook.<br /> (I'm presenting this company as its CEO.)</p> <p>- Filtrbox (Colorado) has raised more than $400,000 from angel<br /> investors. They provide filters and alerts for knowledge workers who<br /> want to monitor news, blogs, and other content sources. They had 250<br /> beta invitations available today, and I was excited to get one.</p> <p>- Format Dynamics (Colorado) has raised $4.4 million from NY angels.<br /> They turn printed internet pages into a revenue opportunity for web<br /> sites by providing magazine quality formatting and by inserting<br /> dynamic ads onto the pages. Third party research shows 61.2 billion<br /> internet pages were printed last year.</p> <p>- Go Fast Sports and Beverage Company (Colorado) creates a great<br /> tasting energy drink. The company is listed as one of the top 100<br /> Beverage Companies in the world the past three years.</p> <p>- HiveLive (Colorado) has raised $2.2 m in angel investment and closed<br /> a $5.6 million venture round last week. They provide solutions to<br /> companies who want to create their own social media applications or<br /> customer communities.</p> <p>- ISONAS Security (Colorado) was founded in 1999 and provides IP based<br /> Access Control enable by a true network appliance.</p> <p>- Newmerix (Colorado) had bookings of $4.74 million last year, more<br /> than double 2006. They are the leading provider of automated<br /> application lifecycle management solutions for SAP, PeopleSoft, and<br /> Oracle E-Business Suite.</p> <p>- Nilar has raised $11 million to date. They produce advanced bipolar<br /> nickel metal hydride batteries for large format applications,<br /> including hybrid vehicles.</p> <p>- ProStor (Colorado) has raised $23.4 million in two rounds. They are<br /> the leading supplier of removable disk solutions for data protection,<br /> long-term archive, and compliance applications.</p> <p>- Socialthing, Inc (Colorado) has raised $375,000 to date. They let<br /> social networkers consolidate all their popular social websites into a<br /> single interface, including on mobile phones.</p> <p>- Tendril Network (Colorado) has raised more than $8 million in<br /> funding to bring energy efficiency to the energy industry.</p> <p>- WBS Connect (Colorado) is owned by its two founders. It had revenus<br /> of $6.4 million in 2006 and $18.5 million in 2007. They provide high<br /> bandwidth IP-based telecommunications services.</p> <p>- Yieldex (San Mateo, CA) is backed by Sequel Ventures, First Round<br /> Capital, and Woodside Fund. They have unique technology to analyze and<br /> allocate online ad inventory, increasing yield by 10-40%. Focus is<br /> yield optimization. Very impressive management team. CEO founded<br /> NetGravity in 1995.</p> <p>- Zayo Group has raised $225 million in equity and $140 million in<br /> debt to do a roll-up of broadband fiber optic networks. They will have<br /> revenue of $160 million and EBITDA of $45 in CY2008. </p> </article> <article> <h1>50 topics I wish I had blogged about</h1> <p>paulballen — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 18:53:07 -0800</p> <p>I keep a Google doc called Blog Ideas. I have added a few dozen ideas to it in the last few months, and haven't gotten around to blogging about very many of them. Right now, I'm looking at the Google doc on my new iphone (Google applications work beautifully on the iphone). Here are some of the blog ideas that I would have blogged about if I had more time:</p> <ul> <li>Record page views the last two days on <a href="http://www.worldvitalrecords.com">WorldVitalRecords.com</a></li> <li>My new Amazon Kindle: I love it!</li> <li>The new <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,330784,00.html">$20 cell phone from India</a></li> <li>A video of my Nov. 6th lecture at BYU about having a Second Chance in the "connecting families" business</li> <li>The Scrabulous incident on Facebook and a blog post that linked to a US gov't web site about how games are not copyrightable </li> <li>Wall Street Journal coverage of <a href="http://www.myreferer.com/mydb/?M=fundinguniverse&ID=paulballen&L=1">FundingUniverse.com</a></li> <li>Analytics tools for Facebook apps</li> <li>The launch of the new World Collection from WorldVitalRecords.com</li> <li>Quantcast's $20 million in new funding: this company will be very disruptive in the online advertising space, imo</li> <li>Ted.com</li> <li>DEMO 2008</li> <li>Google.org renewable energy grants</li> <li>Facebook Beacon</li> <li>Google Presentations</li> <li>Genetree.com launch</li> </ul> <p>There were actually a total of 50 items in my Blog Ideas doc that I haven't taken time to blog about. </p> <p>I keep hoping I can find more time to blog. I keep thinking, "maybe when we're cash flow positive." </p> <p>I recently switched my blog site from WordPress to Drupal, with the help of an IT consultant. The way my site has been set up will make it more SEO friendly, and it should also be easier for me to insert images, and to email blog posts without errors. Drupal is a very robust content management system used by some major web sites.</p> </article> <article> <h1>53</h1> <p>paulballen — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 19:58:19 -0800</p> <p>I love basketball. But my career pretty much ended in 9th grade when I was 5'2" tall and had glasses--and though a pretty good shooter, I got cut from my junior high basketball team.</p> <p>Finally I got my growth spurt, and was about 5'10" as a senior where I tried out for my high school team. I made first and second cuts, but was the final person cut from the team and I've never fully recovered.</p> <p>Back then I was a pretty good shooter. About 25 years ago I once hit 40 consecutive free throws. That was my personal best. About 10 years ago while practicing basketball at my local church (yes, a great reason to join the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Church_of_Jesus_Christ_of_Latter-day_Saints">Mormon church</a> is that they have a gym in almost every chapel) I hit 40 consecutive free throws again and was so upset when I missed on number 41. But my nerves got to me, and I choked.</p> <p>But this week, I am thrilled to announce to the entire world that I achieved one of my major goals in 2008 by hitting 53 consecutive free throws on my new home court. That is now a very special number to me. And isn't it the number of Herbie, the Love Bug too? I might have to buy a miniature Herbie on eBay and mount it on my trophy case.</p> <p>When you were a basketball wanna-be who was the last person cut on his high school basketball team, and you've lived all these years wondering where your basketball career would have gone if only that one coach had believed in you...and then you do something like this...well, it just made me feel really good and I thought you might be happy for me.</p> <p>So now, what do you do if you've achieved your year goal in February. I'm not sure what to do next.</p> <p>I want to know if you have achieved any of your 2008 goals yet? If so, feel free to tell the world here, and then tell us what you are going to do next.</p> </article> <article> <h1>"World Collection" from WorldVitalRecords.com</h1> <p>paulballen — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 19:48:16 -0800</p> <p>The worldwide reach of the internet never ceases to amaze me. Earlier this week, after the announcement of our <a href="http://www.worldvitalrecords.com/world_collection.aspx">World Collection</a>, containing genealogical data from more than 30 countries, I received an internal company email that said:</p> <blockquote><p>We now have subscribers from 48 countries. We increased our country count by 5 in January.<br /> The bolded countries are new in January.</p> <p>Afghanistan, Algeria, American Samoa, <strong>Angola</strong>, Australia, Austria, Bahamas, Bangladesh, Belgium, Bermuda, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Cayman Islands, <strong>Chile</strong>, Costa Rica, Denmark, East Timor, Fiji, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, <strong>Japan</strong>, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Panama, Poland, <strong>Portugal</strong>, Puerto Rico, Saudi Arabia, Slovakia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, United Kingdom, United States, <strong>Wallis and Futuna Islands</strong></p></blockquote> </article> </main></body></html>